The infinite improbability of love

One of the things I liked most about Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is how he used absurdity to confront its readers with very real phenomena.
Thus he conjured up a 'biro planet', a place where all those ballpoints you've lost over the years have gone.
He invented an entire race of foul-smelling aliens to mock bureaucrats.
And he made his main character, Arthur Dent, lose the girl he's smitten with to the president of the galaxy, a guy with two heads and a spaceship.
That's one case when an Aston Martin keychain isn't going to do you much good.
I took the afternoon off today to see the film, and boy, was I in favor of the death penalty for movie producers afterwards.
Arthur Dent gets the girl.
In the book he never did get anywhere with Trillian, and with good reason. If Adams' infinite improbability drive ever did anything, it was to make the probable seem even more probable by making it look so improbable it became impossible to ignore.
I'm sure everyone over 14 knows this already, but unlike what Hollywood would have you believe, true love is something that is very improbable.
That's why, when Arthur finally met Fenchurch, Adams wrote their story with so much absurdity that even a cynic such as myself could accept it.
Adams did not, however, make Arthur smack Trillian after she had PMS'd for half the film whether to choose the exciting-but-unreliable guy or the boring-but-at-least-very-understanding guy.
The people who made this atrocity understand neither life, the universe nor the rest.
Now go say that 42 times fast.

21:21

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